Man gets jail time for groping Bedford Walmart shopper

The complainant told the court MacDonald brushed his hand against her buttocks as he walked past her in the women’s clothing section at Walmart on the evening of March 18, 2017.

A Hammonds Plains man found guilty of groping a woman at a Bedford department store has been handed a four-month jail sentence.

Brian James MacDonald, 27, was convicted of sexual assault in January following a trial in Halifax provincial court.

MacDonald, who is appealing the conviction, was sentenced recently by Judge Amy Sakalauskas.

The judge gave MacDonald 48 days of remand credit, for a net sentence of 72 days in custody.

Sakalauskas made the jail time consecutive to a 28-month prison sentence MacDonald is already serving after pleading guilty to two counts of dangerous driving causing death and one of dangerous driving causing bodily harm from a fatal crash in Lower Sackville in October 2017.

After he does his jail time, MacDonald will be on probation for two years. The judge also ordered him to provide a DNA sample and register as a sex offender for 10 years.

The complainant told the court MacDonald brushed his hand against her buttocks as he walked past her in the women’s clothing section at Walmart on the evening of March 18, 2017.

A few minutes later, she said, MacDonald came up in front of her out of nowhere and grabbed her genitals and one of her breasts.

The woman said she screamed as loud as she could and MacDonald ran away. Security video showed him running out the front door of the store with his hood up over his head.

MacDonald turned himself in about a month later after Halifax Regional Police posted his photo on social media.

He testified that he was at the store doing price-checking for a friend who sells items on Kijiji. He admitted accidentally bumping into the woman from behind while trying to leave the store.

MacDonald said the woman screamed that he had sexually assaulted her. He said he told her she was crazy but took off running because he was embarrassed and did not want to be involved.

At sentencing, Crown attorney Sarah Kirby recommended six months in jail for MacDonald, describing his actions as “bold and brazen.”

“This was what could be termed as low-end in terms of physical intrusiveness on the complainant,” Kirby admitted. “But what was aggravating about it was that this was an apparently random act.

“She was identified by Mr. MacDonald in the Walmart. He made one approach at her and then a few minutes later accosted her in a public place in broad daylight — in a place where she had every right to believe that she would be safe.

“She was physically accosted in a way that violated her sexual integrity.”

Although the victim did not file an impact statement for the sentencing hearing, Kirby said it was clear from her testimony at trial that the event affected her for a long time.

Defence lawyer Josh Nodelman argued for a three-month sentence.

Nodelman explained that his client stood trial in June in a different courtroom on a charge of sexual assault from an incident at the outdoor public pool in Bedford last summer.

In that case, a woman testified that someone brushed her buttocks on two occasions while she was in the kiddie pool with her husband and children.

After hearing some of her evidence, MacDonald pleaded guilty to a charge of common assault and received a three-month sentence to be served concurrently to his federal term. He also agreed to a one-year peace bond requiring him to take part in high-intensity programming for sexual offenders that is offered in the federal prison system.

At his recent court appearance, MacDonald also pleaded guilty to breaching his release conditions in April 2018 by failing to reside at the designated address.

The judge gave him 30 days in jail for that offence, with the time to be served concurrently to the sexual assault sentence.

“Your family wants you to get help,” Sakalauskas told MacDonald. “I’m hopeful that you’ll receive that help.”

In his notice of appeal of the sexual assault convictions, MacDonald claims the judge erred in her assessment of credibility and violated his right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

He also says his trial lawyer, Alex Embree, provided ineffective counsel “by not questioning the complainant on inconsistencies that would have affected credibility.”